Mine arrived in the summer of 2024, quietly, unexpectedly, just as Blue Zoo Creative entered our sixteenth year in business. For decades, I had built a life around creativity: graphic design, advertising, print, web, video, photography…all woven into a craft I’d been honing since the late 1980s. I knew design, branding, and visual storytelling as deeply as a bard knows his tales. But the Call that found me that summer wasn’t about design at all.

It was about marketing.

Specifically, several existing and new potential clients asked us, unsolicited, I might add, for marketing guidance.

Not branding.
Not websites.
Not hosting support.
Marketing.

Which was strange, because we never promote marketing services.

So, like any hero standing at the threshold, I could have ‘refused the call’ and sent people elsewhere, but instead, I crossed the threshold, and I leaned in to listen.

Long before the Call, I had spent years studying the art of persuasion. I devoured Gestalt principles of design, color psychology, and design theory. I pored over “Mad Men”–era research, focus groups, branding books, and the evolving playbooks of advertising agencies from the 1970s to the sleek digital shops of the early 2000s. I loved understanding how a message could strike the right person at the right time.

But there was one part of the journey I resisted: tracking.

Following the breadcrumb trail from a single ad to a measurable sale always felt like a cold, analytical path, far from the warm, narrative-driven world I thrived in. I could track just enough for my own business, but doing it for clients felt like venturing into a cave to face a dragon armed with only a paintbrush.

Luckily, every good story has companions. My business partner is very good with numbers.

Still, as I listened to these potential clients, one truth echoed again and again: They weren’t measuring anything either.

Their “strategy” was social media posting, SEO, and hoping the algorithm blessed them out of kindness. Social media managers tracked likes and impressions, but rarely tied activity to conversions. Though every social media person I spoke with agreed, if you wanted real reach, you had to pay for it.

And without targeting?

Well, you might as well stand in a crowded market and shout your message at random strangers. Even if everyone hears you, it doesn’t help your sales if no one buys.

This wasn’t a failure; it was simply a lack of a process.
And every hero’s journey eventually leads
to a revelation, a gift for the hero (or “ultimate boon”).

Marketing, at its core, is not magic at all.
It’s measurable.
Repeatable.
Adjustable.
It’s a process.

So, while Blue Zoo still doesn’t advertise marketing as a standalone service, we integrate strategy into branding, web, and creative projects, where it naturally belongs.

What You Should Focus on:

Let’s Look at a Practical, Creative-First Approach to a Marketing Strategy

While Blue Zoo still doesn’t promote marketing as a standalone service, we do build strategy as part of branding, web, or larger creative projects. Our approach, and a great system to use to begin your marketing, blends creativity with fundamentals: simple, structured, and measurable.

A simple illustration might help at this point!

Let’s say a thousand (1,000) impressions/views costs you $100. Out of the 1,000 impressions, you manage to sell 100 units (products). And because of the cost of goods, you manage to yield a $6 profit for each. This gives you a $500 profit.

That’s not magic. It’s not luck. It’s a measurable result.

The result, whether it showed a profit or not, allows you to adapt, modify, and repeat. Once that model is tuned, it becomes scalable. Predictable.
A reliable engine for growth, as long as your ad spend isn’t set to “auto-renew” while you’re not watching.

Here’s where our creative hero returns home changed—carrying new insight. Blue Zoo has never been in the business of making things that simply “look good.” Ogilvy said it well: “You cannot bore people into buying.” But being pretty isn’t enough either. Design must connect.

That’s why we’ve always embraced the “Zoo” in our story. Each business and organization is unique, yet they still share similar needs, like animals in a zoo that all require food, water, and shelter. Alligators and Cockatiels both need food, water, and shelter. An alligator needs a pool; a cockatiel needs a perch. Mix them up, and the results are memorable for all the wrong reasons.

Marketing a business or organization is no different: the right message must meet the right audience in the right environment. Or as I learned early in the game: we have to get someone, somewhere, to do something.

That’s the journey.

That’s the craft.

That’s the work.

As you begin, or continue, your own marketing quest, remember it’s more than posting. It’s research, testing, planning, and measuring. It doesn’t have to be overwhelming, but it must be intentional.

Great marketing isn’t a spell.

It’s a cycle.

A journey.

A series of trials and adjustments that sharpen your story until it reaches the people it’s meant to reach. And when creativity, clarity, and measurement finally align,
the results speak for themselves.

Begin simple.
Start small.
Stay consistent.
Measure what matters.

Your story and your strategy using a process deserve nothing less.